Vanities fair

Completing my trifecta of Off-Broadway reviews this week is Vanities at Second Stage.

Any musical that borrows from Burt Bacharach automatically gets a reprieve from me, but seriously: When are we going to see Promises, Promises on Broadway again? The Encores! production was fun but I could see this show a few more times.

A Wiz and a bang

Double-barrel attack in today's New York Post.

First, I tackled the Encores! revival of The Wiz. I heard through the grapevine that it's one of their most expensive efforts ever. Okaaaay. At least it's a lot better than Sidney Lumet's movie, which I had rented last week for the sake of research.

Then I caught the new LCT3 production, Stunning, at the Duke on 42nd St. David Adjmi's play had been getting a lot of buzz and yes, it's really that good. Plus, direction and cast rival anything on Broadway.

Coraline

Stephin Merritt and David Greenspan's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, New York Post, June 2.

This is one instance where I felt really frustrated by the lack of space in the paper, as the show is (spoiler warning!) a failure for very interesting reasons. I'm not sure they're interesting enough to warrant a trip to Christopher Street, but still: food for though there.

The failure of failure

Cynthia Hopkins' The Success of Failure (or, The Failure of Success) at St. Ann's Warehouse, New York Post, May 28, 2009.

I know Hopkins has her fans. Let's just say I'm not one of them.

Oh Sherie

At last, Sherie Rene Scott gets a whole show to herself! I just loved Everyday Rapture (review in today's New York Post) and I hope it finds the audience it deserves. Scott is a musical-theater animal but projects a very different vibe than a Kristin Chenoweth, a Donna Murphy or even a Leslie Kritzer. She's well worth discovering if you aren't a fan yet.

It's a wrap

And we finally conclude the 2008-09 Broadway season with two shows: Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Dolly Parton's 9 t0 5. I like to think of them as one entity, Waiting from 9 to 5. Both reviews are in today's New York Post.

But just because Broadway is done for now doesn't mean I can rest: look out for Sherie Rene Scott's Everyday Rapture, Ethan Coen's Offices and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice next week.

Next to Normal

Next to Normal transfers from Second Stage to the Booth Theatre on Broadway, New York Post, April 16, 2009.

A musical bravely tries to explore terrain (mental illness) usually neglected by the genre. I really wish I had liked it more.

Rock on

Rock of Ages at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York Post, April 8, 2009. More ’80s songs that you can shake a stick at—and I've played almost all them on Guitar Hero.

Long beautiful Hair

The revival of Hair hits the Al Hirshfeld Theatre, New York Post, April 1, 2009.

The show was extraordinary when it was presented at the Delacorte in Central Park last summer, and miraculously it still is on Broadway. And they're going to record it, so more good times ahead!

Director Diane Paulus goes full-on hippie, but I also enjoy more twisted versions of the material. Check out Army of Lovers' Swedish disco take on "Let the Sun Shine In":

Happiness is a lukewarm gun

A new musical, Happiness, opens at Lincoln Center Theater; New York Post, March 31, 2009.

The show has quite the pedigree: book by John Weidman, direction and choreography by Susan Stroman, lyrics and music by Michael Korie and Scott Frankel (the guys who did Grey Gardens, although that's not really a recommendation for me).

Tonight, I'm returning to see Neil LaBute's Reasons to be Pretty, which I'd caught Off Broadway last year.

Keep cool, daddy-o

West Side Story at the Palace Theatre, New York Post, March 20.

Hard to believe, but it's been almost 30 years since the Jets and the Sharks have duked it out on their home turf. Arthur Laurents's revival of Gypsy last season was a triumph, and now he's tackled another of his books. Did lighting strike twice?

Rooms with a view

Paul Scott Goodman's ROOMS a rock romance at New World Stages, New York Post, March 17.

Leslie Kritzer is back!

How do you say?

I know that just like me, you've been wondering about this: How do you say “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” in Swedish?

Apparently it's “Superkaffiryteflanisötomaxigrafisk” in the production of Mary Poppins currently playing at the Göteborg Opera.

Best stage moments of 2008

After the best singles and before the best albums (we'll have to wait for the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop poll for that), here are my favorite theater/opera moments of the year, in alphabetical order.

1. Adding Machine. This Expressionistic Chicago import proved that there is still life in the American musical at the end of the ’00s.

2. All My Sons. Simon McBurney's non-naturalistic approach threw off a few people, but I found it mesmerizing. This is what happens when the powers that be on Broadway entrust a play to a director who's capable of reading the material, then of translating it into a specifically theatrical language.

3. Arias with a Twist. This collaboration between Joey Arias and Basil Twist was permeated by the spirit of downtown—and by that I mean the old East Village, before it turned into New York's answer to the French Quarter. Like Adding Machine, albeit with a completely different aesthetic, this show illustrated how much you can achieve with a small budget and a large imagination.

4. Billy Elliot. The best three seconds of the year: When a miner yells out "We're on strike!" to his companions and they all happily shout back "Yay!!!" No wonder Terry Teachout's review in The Wall Street Journal was titled "Karl Marx in a tutu"—and he didn't mean that in a good way. "Feel-good socialist kitsch," Teachout huffed. Ah yes, and that's exactly what Broadway—and the nation at large, I'd venture—wants right now.

5. Blasted. Frankly, the play itself isn't all that (Sarah Kane's youthful nihilism can be overly self-conscious and deliberate) but Sarah Benson's production was as good as it could be, while I can't even fathom how Marin Ireland and Reed Birney did what they did on the stage every night for weeks on end. Incidentally, Ireland has turned into a downtown treasure over the past few years (Far Away and Beebo Brinker come to mind). The EW reviewer listed the show among the year's worst, blaming its lack of humanity. There was plenty of humanity in Blasted, except it was defiled every step of the way; guess that's not what some want at the theater.

6. Gypsy. Saw that one three times. No need to go on about Patti LuPone's performance again, so I'll just say that Laura Benanti's transformation from ugly vaudeville duckling to glamorous burlesque swan remains an erotic highlight.

7. Hair. Oh, how I hate audience participation! Especially when it involves going onstage and haplessly prancing about with the cast. And yet when that happened at the end of this thrilling production at the Delacorte, it could not have felt more à propos.

8. Opening Night. I found myself thinking about Ivo van Hove's adaptation of the Cassavetes movie a lot after seeing it, wondering in particular about some of the staging choices. With its heavy use of a simultaneous videocast, the production rewards multiple viewings, from as many different angles as possible. Alas, it didn't play BAM long enough to allow for a return visit. I hear van Hove directed a stage adaptation of Cries and Whispers in Europe this year. This is a call to BAM, Lincoln Center and St. Ann's Warehouse: please bring it here!

9. Passing Strange. Stew and Heidi Rodewald's little-musical-that-could adapted surprisingly well to the Broadway stage. A much better translation of the rock idiom to musical theater than Spring Awakening.

10. Die Soldaten. If I had to pick a single event this year, it would be this electroshock of a modernist opera, mounted by Lincoln Center Festival at the Armory. Now that we are engulfed in a recession, this divisive, outlandish production—in which the audience sat on huge moving platforms, flanked on the sides by a ginormous 110-member orchestra imported from Germany—feels like the last gasp of the freespending days. (Someone told me it would have cost the same to fly everybody who saw the show in New York to Germany!)

Special mentions…

Boeing-Boeing, for understanding that farce needs to be staged with Swiss-clock precision… Come Back, Little Sheba, for S. Epatha Merkerson's heartwrenching portrayal of a woman stuck not only in a thankless marriage, but in the thankless decade known as the 1950s… Michael Clark Company's OO and O, for their elegant embrace of the punk and classical realms… The Cripple of Inishmaan, for making me get over a longstanding distrust of Irish plays… La Damnation de Faust, for the sight of video trees wilting as the Devil walked in front of them… The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, or The Friends of Dr. Rushower, for its enchanting first act and its wonderful projections, which easily bested the ones in the more high-profile Sunday in the Park with George.

I'm not old, I'm just drawn that way

Last week I briefly mentioned the Roundabout's revival of Pal Joey, and an issue I had with a particular acting choice. I should qualify the statement by saying my qualm involves more than just Stockard's Channing decisions: It starts with Richard Greenberg's tweaking of the book and Joe Mantello's direction, and spreads to Stocks's interpretation of her role.

The main plot line involves the affair between the young, caddish Joey Evans and the older, much wealthier Mrs. Vera Simpson. She picks him up in the nightclub where he sings, has her way with him in her luxury pad, buys him his own boîte in exchange for delicious sexual favors (the show makes it clear that Joey has what it takes to make a woman of the world very happy indeed). This angle was played to the hilt in the Encores! revival of 1995: Patti LuPone's Vera pretty much bought herself a living, breathing sex toy. And when her unseen husband made it known she wasn't quite discreet enough, Vera dumped Joey in a carefree manner that implied that far from heartbroken, she'd soon move on to another stud.

In the current production, Vera clearly has feelings for Joey; when she ends things up, it is with a sadness that suggests this was her last hurrah—not only as a sexual woman, but as a woman, period. Of course the creative team may have thought this made more sense, considering Channing is 64 to LuPone's 46 at the time. But this strikes me as retrograde: There is something liberating—and liberated—about a musical in which a woman's main relationship is purely hedonistic. In other words, she is allowed to have sex with just the right amount of feeling, which in this particular case is very little. Alas now Vera Simpson ends up a sad sack, not a triumphant conqueror.

Broadway babes

I'm getting a little excited about Sutton Foster in Shrek the Musical over at the Sunday Arts blog.

And speaking of Broadway dames, the Sheila perfectly executed one of her typically ambitious home-decorating ideas yesterday: She decided to honor two of our favorite belters on our Christmas tree, so she found various photos of Patti LuPone and Leslie Kritzer on the internet, cut them out in medallion shapes and affixed them to our silver baubles. Now our tree is adorned with several of them, in between ornaments of the Rockettes kicking their heels. We are not ashamed of our love for the musical theater here in Park Slope.

Sweet on Hugh

Hugh Jackman is hosting the Oscars! Yay! I hope this means the producers will finally bring back the musical numbers that have been sorely missed in recent years. What better way to celebrate the infamous Snow White Debacle of 1989 than have Hugh let loose in a huge floor show? It would be the 20th anniversary, too. You cannot call yourself a lover of Tinseltown flakery if you haven't seen this magnificent disaster, which I believe was choreographed by Debbie Allen.

Hugh did a fantastic job hosting the Tonys, but then Tony is a lot looser than Oscar when it comes to swishing. "Dancing makes studio executives really, really nervous…" Omigod, I just adore him!!!

Lena Philipsson again and again

I realize that not only have I been slacking on the posting front, but I'm doing two (almost) in a row about Lena Philipsson. Deal with it: we're lucky to live in Lena's world.

The news this time is that yesterday the Dilettante's Special Stockholm Correspondent actually saw Lena + Orup (as it is billed), and he even snapped some photos. I'm putting up my favorite: Lena sang "Det gör ont" in a nurse's uniform that somehow involved a micro-skirt (hot pants on the backup singers). Oh I just love her so much!

Apparently there were several costume changes, a karaoke segment involving two Japanese men (genius!), and Lena and Orup even signed CDs afterwards. According to the DSSC, the evening was "a curious mix of power pop, rockabilly, state-of-the-art schlager, acoustic ballads and karaoke. But it worked!"

And where was I while all this fabulousness was unfolding? At a little cutting-edge pageant called White Christmas—or rather Irving Berlin's White Christmas on Broadway. It actually was a pleasant surprise, which sometimes happens when you go in with very low expectations. As far as seasonal shows go, this one is pretty fun. First, you always have Irving Berlin tunes to fall back on. Second, the cast is made up of amiable pros who may lack that extra little something that sets the star apart from the journeyman, but they seemed to have fun—and that goes a long way with me. Third: Susan Mansur, the kind of scenery-chewing comic second banana I adore. Fourth: lots of tapping. Randy Skinner isn't the most creative choreographer, but he sure loves those ensemble numbers with hoofers going at it full force, and I happily respond to them in a Pavlovian manner.

Proposition 8, the Musical

It had to happen: Marc Shaiman, of Hairspray's fame, has put together a three-minute musical about Proposition 8. It's got a starry cast, references to sodomy and shrimp cocktails, and jaunty tunes. I don't ask for much more from musicals.

Stage frights

The night’s oddity was an ominous electronic remix of “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” throbbing and tinkling as Ms. Brightman, dressed like Little Red Riding Hood, pedaled a (stationary) bicycle through darkness with holographic wolves looming nearby. She was rapping, “Even if you cry you won’t be heard,” and wailing, “It’s just in my mind!”

The review of Sarah Brightman's show at Madison Square Garden makes it sound right up my alley. Why wasn't I there? Why oh why oh why?!? This is the kind of nutso showbiz move I just adore.

At least I will be home tomorrow evening for the premiere of Rosie O'Donnell's new live variety show. I was already feeling warm and fuzzy toward it—I'll watch anything that involves "Broadway dancers, celebrity appearances, musical acts and comedy sketches"—but the news that the program will open with "City Lights" from the Kander & Ebb musical The Act (directed by Martin Scorsese!) makes it unmissable. Yes, they are going to do this:



Okay, now picture it with Rosie instead of Liza. It's going to be a moment for the ages, and it'll be witnessed by all the show-tunes freaks of America. How could this not do well in the ratings? Actually, don't answer that, especially if you work for NBC.